Pedestrians pass a Verizon Wireless store on Canal Street in New York. / John Minchillo, AP

by Natalie DiBlasio, @ndiblasio, USA TODAY

by Natalie DiBlasio, @ndiblasio, USA TODAY

The social media universe was buzzing Thursday with reports that Verizon, on orders from a top secret court, has been handing over call data to national security officials.

The original story, published by The Guardian, had more than 10,200 shares on Twitter and 69,000 shares on Facebook before 10 a.m. By 1:30 p.m., the Facebook shares exceeded 103,000.

The hashtag #NSA was trending for hours on Twitter and continued into the afternoon, with anger, confusion and plenty of jokes â?? especially around Verizon's "share everything plan" and their catch phrase "Can you hear me now?"

The Obama administration defended the National Security Agency's need to collect telephone records of U.S. citizens -- without actually confirming published reports that Verizon had been ordered to provide the NSA with call records for millions of U.S. customers since April.

The Guardian reported Wednesday that Verizon has been required to turn over information on all domestic and international calls on an "ongoing, daily basis," even if customers are not suspected of a crime. The order, effective until July 19, was issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, The Guardian said, adding that it had obtained a copy of the order.

The content of the calls are not being provided, but "the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers and the time and duration of all calls," The Guardian writes.